Monday, December 21, 2020

2020 year in review part 1: Waterloo in the time of COVID-19

By Anne Galang.

To say it has been another eventful year at the University of Waterloo would be a tremendous understatement. It certainly has not been a typical year for the University—or the world—as we navigate a global pandemic, and many of us will be happy to see 2020 well behind us. We at the Daily Bulletin thought that is all the more reason to look back on this tumultuous year and find the bright spots. As it turns out, there are many.

The University’s COVID-19 response

The 2020 winter term began as most winter terms have any other January, with the University reopening campus as students, faculty and staff returned from the holidays. Meanwhile, over 10,000 km away, in Wuhan, China, health authorities were treating dozens of cases of an unusual pneumonia. The cause of the illnesses was soon identified as a new virus belonging to the coronavirus family, which the world presently knows all too well as COVID-19.

As the COVID-19 situation rapidly unfolded in the early months of the year, the University moved quickly to adjust operations to keep its students, faculty and staff safe. On March 13, the University of Waterloo suspended all course activity for one week, and resumed the winter 2020 term with all academic activity online. Days later, most campus operations also went virtual, where feasible.

A tremendous amount of work goes into making such a massive pivot so quickly. Faculty and instructors had to drastically change their course plans, and support groups, including more than 300 co-op students, helped move these courses online. Researchers needed to find ways to keep their important work going, and non-academic units made the adjustment to new ways of working. And through it all, essential workers continued to report to work in person to keep the physical campus and essential research running.

Supporting our students and communities

Throughout the transition, the University has made student wellbeing a top priority. To help address the financial strain, the University and WUSA created the Student Support Fund. During this time of heightened uncertainty, the University hired additional counsellors to address the increased need for mental health services, and rolled out remote services and virtual programs to support students with academics, wellbeing and connecting with peers.

Groups across the University found new ways for working in this “new normal” to support students, and quickly adapted to support co-op students, and celebrated spring and fall convocations online with virtual experiences for our graduands.

The University also mobilized to support local communities. A Community Response Team was formed to help the University support front-line healthcare workers and vulnerable members of the community in various ways, including a PPE drive, donations to the Food Bank, and the use of University 3D printers to produce medical equipment such as components for face shields.

A safe and gradual return to campus

As Waterloo delivered the largest remote spring term in Canada over the summer months, teams across campus were also busy working to restart the University’s research enterprise, safely and gradually bring employees back to campus, and prepare for a safe re-opening of some academic, service and residence buildings and to welcome students to campus for the fall.

By the time the fall term began in September, we had many safety measures in place on campus, including modified physical spaces to help maintain physical distancing, increased cleaning and sanitation, caps on the number of students in classrooms and labs, mandatory face masks inside common areas of university buildings, and a campus check-in tool.

The University also opened its own on-campus COVID-19 testing centre to help with quickly responding to any positive cases of COVID-19, and launched a COVID-19 hotline to help the campus community quickly access accurate health information and support.

Global impact

Looking more broadly beyond our campus, Waterloo continues to make an impact on the global efforts to fight the pandemic. Faculty are offering expert commentary to the media on topics ranging from restarting the economy to COVID-19 testing in pharmacies to unpacking how the recently announced vaccines will work. The University has and continues to contribute important research related to the pandemic, including using artificial intelligence to improve COVID-19 screening, developing a method that can identify future COVID-19-like viruses within minutes, and developing a cutting-edge DNA-based vaccine to protect against COVID-19.

Over the course of 2020, the University community has and continues to exemplify its ability to adapt in turbulent times, its capacity for compassion, and its spirit of innovation. It has been a challenging year, but there is much to be proud of.

There are, of course, many other 2020 highlights not related to the pandemic, which you can read about in part two of this series. Stay tuned.

Waterloo competitors do well in AGE-WELL video competition

Two members of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences captured two of the top three spots in the AGE-WELL Network's video competition.

Hector Perez, a postdoctoral fellow with the School of Public Health and Health Systems, won first prize in AGE-WELL's Trainee Video Competition with his submission, Dementia - The risk of going missing.

Lauren McLennan, an undergraduate student also in the School, was one of two runners-up with her entry, First responders’ perspectives of return home interviews.

Every year, the AGE-WELL Network of Centre of Excellence organizes a video competition, where researchers from across Canada within its network prepare two-minute videos about their research project, progress, and impacts.

"The evaluation of this competition is about the researcher's ability to explain in an easy-to-understand manner their research projects, how they will address their research problem and the potential impact of the research," writes Perez.

AGE-WELL is Canada’s technology and aging network, dedicated to the creation of technologies and services that benefit older adults and caregivers.